Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue III, 2013 | Page 74

Technology
By Daniel Lieberman

Improve Your
Social Media!
Getting smarter at online marketing

S

ocial media is important—and confusing—one reason
that each month our Franchise Consumer Marketing
Report e-newsletter features a “Social Media Roundup”
column from social media tracker and consultant Daniel
Lieberman, highlighting useful new developments and trends in
social media marketing. Here’s a selection to whet your appetite.
subscribe.franchising.com/franchisors.html
Spend your social media time more efficiently

Small businesses seeking to take advantage of social media
face the same problem they have with everything they want
to do that isn’t absolutely necessary to keep the business going: time. There simply are not enough hours in the day to
do everything that needs to be done and interact on social
media—even though they know it’s important, and that their
customers expect them to be there. This 10-step action plan
aims to help small businesses maximize their social media efforts and use their time more efficiently.
heidicohen.com/small-business-how-to-use-timeefficiently-on-social-media/
The “perfect” Facebook post: 7 tips

Nobody’s perfect, especially in social media, so here are seven
tips to help you craft better Facebook Page posts. They include advice on the optimal size for image uploads; how to
use Facebook’s Sponsored Stories to promote your posts; the
need for calls to action; and a reminder that many or most
Facebook users are now viewing your content on mobile devices—which means you need to keep it simple and short.
www.jeffbullas.com/2013/05/03/the-perfectfacebook-post/
6 steps to mastering the power of local data

All sales are local, so crank up your locally based social media efforts. Start by claiming your venue on Facebook Places,
Foursquare, Google+ local, and Yelp. Monitor your reviews and
check-ins. Learn about what your customers like and don’t like
about your brand. Take the opportunity to respond: you can
counter bad reviews and build on good ones. Remember, 97
percent of consumers search for local businesses online and 67
percent of those searches result in purchases, so there’s a lot at
stake. Local data also can provide insight into your competition.
www.viralblog.com/big-data/how-to-master-thepower-of-solomo-data-in-6-steps/

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Multi-Unit Franchisee Is s ue III, 2013

Tumblr as a marketing platform?

Tumblr, the microblogging service, was recently purchased
by Yahoo for more than $1 billion. Here are four reasons you
might want to give it another look, especially for businesses
with younger customers:
1) Creative freedom: Tumblr has an exceptional set of
easy-to-use tools to publish any kind of content you can
imagine. It’s easy and fun to make an interesting and unusual Tumblr page.
2) It’s cool: Tumblr is at least as popular among the 15- to
25-year-old demographic as Facebook. For the many younger
users turned off by the presence of adults in their lives on
Facebook, Tumblr offers relative anonymity.
3) Your competition probably isn’t there yet. Tumblr has
not been used much by smaller brands.
4) Tumblr now offers ads. Both on the desktop and on mobile devices, Tumblr offers advertisers access to younger users.
www.likeable.com/blog/2013/05/4-reasonswhy-your-brand-should-reconsider-tumblr/
Blogging more often—in less time

Blogging works for businesses online. It’s been proven to be
a winning strategy. An active blog serves as a useful anchor
for a social media strategy, providing both a steady source of
content for posts and an engaging, content-rich destination
for people who take an interest in a brand. But keep in mind:
blogging is work. Learn some tactics to make it easier to keep
an effective, engaging blog going.
heidicohen.com/blogging-how-to-post-more-oftenwithout-working-harder/
On the other hand, maybe social media’s not for you

Small businesses feeling the pressure to jump on the social
media bandwagon can take a step back and breath a sigh of
relief: they don’t have to do it yesterday, or even tomorrow…
at least until they get other, more immediately important,
parts of their house in order. Here’s an interesting blog from
Stephanie Schwab, principal at Crackerjack Marketing, suggesting that smaller businesses take a step back and do a selfevaluation of what they are doing before adding something
new in the form of social media marketing.
www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-mediamarketing/when-small-businesses-shouldnt-dosocial-media/

Daniel Lieberman is the founder of Daniel Lieberman Digital
(“I speak Geek—You don’t need to”). Based in Shelburne Falls,
Mass., he hel